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Gluten Free in Italy

My husband and I have enjoyed several trips to Italy and we are returning for the first time since he was diagnosed with celiac. Does anyone know if the Italians are trying to accommodate gluten free menu choices? This will be tricky in Italy!

No, it is not tricky at all. Italians are probably well ahead of most of the world in offering gluten-free menus. Just do some simple google searches for the towns where you are going and you will get the names of restaurants, and tell the places where you'll be staying that you want some gluten-free items for breakfast.

I had a tour mate last October on our trip to Greece and Turkey who could not eat foods with gluten. She did the smartest thing ever: she brought the Greek and Turkish translation of gluten free on little pieces of paper, and always handed it out to the waiter when being handed the menu. Brilliant, because in some places, they had a separate menu, but in most places they would either point out what wouldn't work or made a special meal for her.

Apart from restaurants, Italian supermarkets these days occasionally give the impression all Italians have coeliac disease.

The pasta sections in particular are almost devoid of premium-priced tasteless stuff, and absolutely stuffed with dozens going on hundreds of shapes and sizes of mainstream, but deglutenised, pasta. The same is true of any other food category where gluten might be an issue.

We now spend almost as much time and money loading the car with real food for gluten-intolerant friends otherwise reduced to trawling "health" food shops as we devote to finding wine, salsiccie and cheese for ourselves.

I think there's an interesting cultural trait here. All Italians don't of course have coeliac disease, or even think they do. But the idea of carving out a pseudo-identity by eating differently is quite alien to many Italians. Since a large number of Italians know people who say they've got gluten problems, the simple solution is to serve gluten-free food for everyone. That means food manufacturers have to develop food most Italians will like and can afford. That awful (and thankfully dying) Anglo-Saxon habit of serving real food for most people round the table, and a defrosted lentilburger for the faddist, is simply unItalian.

flanneruk's post sounds more like hobbyhorse ideology and irritation he/she needs to vent about than anything having to do with what goes in Italy.

I don't know many Italians who serve or eat manufactured gluten-free pasta or foods unless they themselves have a doctor-diagnosed gluten intolerance. People hosting gluten-free guests typically make "real foods" like potatoes, polenta or rice instead of deglutinized pasta. They serve a dessert of fruit or meringue, etc. Contrary to popular belief, not all Italians eat pasta anyway.

As for families, there is nothing "unItalian" about being doted on by the cook and getting a special dish, made just for you.

The real difference in attitude is that Italians generally care a great deal about making sure the food one eats make you feel good, in terms of digestion, not merely taste. Most would never dream of being insulting about someone else avoiding certain foods for digestion reasons, and would in fact go out of their way not to impose on another a food that disagreed with the stomach. That said, lots of Italians love food fads, as supermarkets and restaurant menus attest.

Fodor's is so infected with dopes who have all sorts of inane opinions about not only things that are actually none of their business, but equally inane opinions about the places they visit. One should probably just ignore the constant crap, but you have to wonder if anybody is taking it seriously.

The fact is that there is a higher than average incidence of celiac disease in Italy than in most other countries. That explains the relative abundance of gluten-free food. I don't know anyone who would serve gluten-free pasta to everyone just because one person was gluten-intolerant. There may be some brands that are tolerable, but none are as good as real pasta.

My granddaughter was allergic to wheat (an allergy she's since outgrown) and I bought gluten-free products for her, because it was the easiest way to find wheat-free foods. I always prepared a separate portion for her, because no one else would have willingly eaten gluten-free. When she no longer needed it, my husband and I had a fair supply to use up or throw out. We used it up, but it wasn't our favorite meal, by far. I wouldn't waste a good ragù on it, for sure.

I do agree that some of the Italian brands of gluten-free pasta were better than anything my daughter could find in the US, so we always brought them pasta when we went to visit.